The world's current reliance on fossil fuels poses many problems. Fossil fuels are currently consumed 100,000 times faster than they are made, sparking speculation as to how much longer the world's fossil fuel supplies will last. In addition, fossil fuel use poses environmental risks in drilling to retrieve the fuel, transporting the fuel to consumers, and through the by-products of fossil fuel consumption. Still further, two thirds of the world's oil is concentrated in the Middle East, in the control of OPEC, forcing nations to rely in large part on OPEC to ensure their supply of oil.
By contrast, hydrogen powered fuel cells offer many advantages over fossil fuels. For example, hydrogen has a simply chemistry and produces energy cleanly. In addition, hydrogen-powered fuel cells can convert 40–65% of the hydrogen's energy, which makes fuel cells much more efficient than internal combustion engines, which capture only 15–20% of the energy of gasoline.
Hydrogen is also an environmentally sounder fuel source. For example, hydrogen is odorless, colorless, and tasteless, and is both non-toxic and safe to breathe. Because hydrogen dissipates when leaked, a major hydrogen spill would amount to little more than a waste of valuable fuel. Thus, in contrast to the ecological disasters caused by oil spills, spilled hydrogen merely dissipates.
Hydrogen also offers economic advantages as a replacement to fossil fuels. Since hydrogen is formed from the electrolysis of water, it exists in unlimited supply. In addition, increased use of hydrogen-powered fuel cells will reduce world dependence on conventional fuels, which are subject to volatility in price and supply. By substituting hydrogen for fossil fuels, moreover, industrialized nations can reduce their heavy dependence on OPEC to supply oil.
Fuel cells are already being used to generate power for clusters of homes and factories, and are likely to appear soon in portable applications such as laptop computers, cellular phones and cars. Indeed, many major automobile manufacturers are investigating fuel cell technology; hydrogen-powered buses are already in use in Vancouver, Stuttgart, Chicago and Sacramento; and the state of California has mandated that 10% of new cars meet a “zero emissions” by 2008.
Attempts have been made to extract hydrogen for fuel cells from petrol or methanol. However, this method of hydrogen extraction adds considerable weight and complexity to cars, and yet still produces some tail-pipe emissions. Therefore, this approach has largely been abandoned. As an alternative solution, oil firms and automobile manufacturers now hope feed to fuel cells directly with hydrogen by connecting filling stations to natural gas grids. Reformer plants would extract hydrogen from the hydrocarbon gas at the filling station, thereby allowing the fuel cell to be directly filled with hydrogen.
Wind power, however, is a reliable, clean, low cost, and unlimited source of energy for the production of hydrogen. In addition, by producing hydrogen from wind power, the energy produced by wind can be stored. In this regard, a project is being undertaken on the island of Utsira on the Norwegian coast to use excess energy from windmills to produce hydrogen (see Hydrogen Society on the Island of Utsira, Norsk Hydro, May 9, 2003). When wind power is unavailable for generating electricity, the hydrogen is fed to a generator to produce electricity. Thus, it is clear that wind power will be one of the major sources of energy for high volume hydrogen production.
Currently the two major wind energy alternatives are onshore and offshore wind parks or wind farms. However, both types of wind parks suffer several disadvantages. For example, the windmills are fixed to the ground, whether onshore or offshore, and must therefore survive extreme weather conditions. In addition, in order to produce energy from wind cost-effectively, the windmills must have very large blade spans. Therefore, the main shaft of the windmill rotates slowly, and efficiency at the central area of the windmill is low. However, power generators require a relatively high rate of rotation to function efficiently. As a result, a gear mechanism must be provided between the main shaft of the windmill and the generator. Still further, wind speeds over land are low relative to wind speeds over water. However, offshore wind parks are currently limited to shallow water, thereby restricting possible locations.